


batten down the hatches

by bluebacchus



Series: Halloween Terrorfest 2019 [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Buried Alive, Crack Treated Seriously, Immortality, Multi, Nonsense, Pacific Rim AU, Plague, Resurrection, Witch Trials
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-12-24 12:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus
Summary: A collection of halloweenterrorfest ficsDay 1: It's Alive - Tom & John Hartnell; Pacific Rim AUDay 3: They're Here - Pubic Hair Samples from John Hartnell's Exhumed, Mummified Body in... The PubesDay 4: What I once used to dream, I now dread - Tozer/Heather; ImmortalityDay 6: They're Coming to Get You - John Hartnell/Graham Gore; Buried AliveDay 10: Sometimes dead is better - Lady Jane/Sir John; ResurrectionDay 11: Corruptible mortal state - Irving/Malcolm; witch trials





	1. It's Alive (hartnell brothers, pacific rim au)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy October!

The sirens worked better than any alarm clock Tom Hartnell had ever had the displeasure of waking up to. The sound was shrill and loud and inescapable, but it was still so damn _exciting._ He’d only been a pilot for a year, but he and John had four kills under their belt and Tom was ready for the fifth. It would make them the youngest team to kill five Kaiju in Shatterdome history.

“Let’s go, John!” Tom shouted over the blaring alarm, shaking his brother’s shoulder even though he was already awake.

“Take it easy, Tommy- we’ve got time. Maybe try brushing your teeth for once,” he laughed, jumping off his top bunk and shutting the door to the toilet in Tom’s face.

“Hey-“

John opened the door and threw Tom’s toothbrush at him before closing it again to do his business. Having to pee in the drift was one of the worst shared experiences in the world. They became a Youtube sensation over it, though ‘Arctic Terror Does Dumb Victory Dance Outside Plymouth Shatterdome’ wasn’t what Tom wanted to be remembered for.

He wanted to be a hero, and he had to get that fifth kill to do it.

“Let’s go, Tommy! Last one to the bay has to eat a can of Goldner’s soup!” John shouted as he burst out the door and ran, Tommy in hot pursuit.

* * *

The Kaiji was a Class IV, codenamed Sledgeboat because of the heavy, boat-shaped clubs on the ends of its arms. It was a brute of a beast with none of the curious and horrifying evolutions of other Kaiju they had fought. _Or at least none we’ve seen so far,_ John said into their shared neural net, and Tom nodded. The water they stood in was up to the Jaeger’s waist, making movement too difficult to try to outflank the beast.

_Right now we should-_

Arctic Terror ducked under a punch aimed for its head.

-_come up with a new strategy. We can’t fight it like this_, Tom thought loudly. Sledgeboat clapped its boat-clubs together, smashing Arctic Terror’s arm between them.

They both swore, feeling the pain of the machine as their own. But then-

Tom could feel John grin at the same time as him when, in tandem, they thought _SWORD?_

“Deploy sword!” John shouted, because it was his turn to yell the unneeded command. It was infinitely more fun to shout about swords than just think about them.

Sledgeboat reeled backwards, letting go of the Jaeger’s arm that it had clamped between its two clubbed arms. Together, the Hartnell brothers drove the sword into the Kaiju’s head, twisting the blade until the monster collapsed into the water.

The intercom crackled to life. “Well done, lads!” Blanky said. “Now bring it in home and get some rest. I’m sure you two are going to have a busy day celebrating tomorrow!”

“Number Five!” Tom yelled, punching the air with both his fist and with Arctic Terror’s.

The intercom crackled again. “Take care, Hartnells. Watch your backs and make it back in one piece,” Commander Crozier said. “I’m proud of you boys.”

Wearing matching smiles, John reached over to clasp Tom’s hand in his. “You heard the man, Tommy. Let’s go back.”

They turned to walk back to the bay, Shatterdome still in sight from their position in the shallows of the Atlantic. Just then, the earth underneath them began to shift and move, and Arctic Terror lost its footing, falling forward and submerging the ConnPod under the icy water. Strapped into the neural network, John struggled against the harness that held him in place as the water began to flood the pod. _Calm down, John,_ Tom said, flooding their connection with his relaxed and rational thoughts.

_-Don’t panic. We’ll disconnect, activate the emergency escape, and swim back to shore if we have to. _

_-But what happened? What-_

A high-pitched shriek came from above the surface, penetrating through the metal hull and making their ears start to bleed.

-_Oh my God. It’s alive. It’s still alive. John, it’s still alive, we have to-_

The water was inches away from his face, and Tom turned his head to keep his nose above it. He was facing his brother when a long, thin spike pierced through the metal of their Jaeger and straight through John’s chest.

“John!” Tom struggled, finally releasing the safety catch holding him into the harness and falling into the freezing water. He swam to his brother, pushing the release button on his harness. John was held in place by the spike.

“Tommy,” he said, reaching for his brother’s face. “Go on without me.”

“I can’t,” Tom cried. The water had submerged John’s nose, and Tom held up his head so he could breathe.

“I’m so glad,” John whispered, water turning red around him, “that we did this together.”

Another spike pierced the hull of the Jaeger where Tom had been strapped in, and then another into John’s body, and then another that grazed Tom’s leg as he swam to the bottom of the pod, where he found a crack in the glass. Tom kicked it, again and again, with his heavy boots, until he made a hole big enough to swim through. He surfaced once more in the pod for air, kicked his boots off, and dove.

* * *

He was picked up by the Lady Jane, a search and rescue base that operated out of the Plymouth Shatterdome, while Harry and Silna piloted Chinook Aurora out to deal with the Kaiju, which had grown quills and looked like a murderous sea urchin sitting out in the ocean.

“We need to go back,” Tom kept saying, but no one would listen. “John’s still in there. We need to go back.”

Commander Crozier greeted him personally when he came back into the Shatterdome.

“I’m sorry about your brother, son,” he said, pulling Tom in for an embrace.

“We need to go get him,” Tom said, and Crozier just held him tighter.

“We will, lad. We will.”


	2. They're Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The radioactive contents of the sample jar in the back of the laboratory fridge wants to return to its master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was very tempting to post this with no context, but I think it’s more important for everyone to know that Beattie & co. (who exhumed the Beechey Island bodies in the ‘80s) specifically removed pubic hair samples from John Hartnell’s body to test in the lab, which just so happens to be where I go to school. 
> 
> We are now planning Pube Heist. HMU if you’re interested in stealing some pubes. 
> 
> Either way, enjoy this complete and utter nonsense about poor, fragile Jartnell getting his pubes back.

_WE ARE HERE_

_WE ARE WAITING_

_COME BACK TO US, JOHN. COME BACK._

* * *

It is an average day in August for John Hartnell IV, PhD, to be working in the university laboratory. He is testing crabs for STDs, and stumbled across one with a professional air about it and eyes that said _I’ve seen shit, boy._ Upon further inspection, John IV found that the crab had been alive for over 170 years. Shocked by this discovery, as well the discovery of a small dog tag that read _Terrance _hung about the crab’s neck like a collar_,_ he decided to take a break and go get himself a can of Fanta from the fridge.

The laboratory fridge is filled with all kinds of fungus. Navigating the tupperwares of forgotten butter chicken, John IV finds an interesting vial, contents clouded by condensation and strange green ooze. He removes the vial carefully.

“It must be that new energy drink everyone upstairs is talking about,” he says to the empty room.

_OPEN US._

_LET US OUT._

“The air conditioning sure is acting up today!” he half-shouts, effusing positivity while ignoring the reality that he is in Canada and there is no air conditioning. Not at all disturbed by the strange whispering from the mysterious vial, John IV shakes it, swirling the green ooze around.

_WHEEE_

He continues to shake it.

_WHEEE_

He flips it upside down and listens for the tell-tale sounds of carbonation.

_THAT’S ENOUGH NOW, SLAVE. OPEN US._

_I DON’T FEEL WELL_ says a smaller voice in the vial.

_YOU AND YOUR MOTION SICKNESS WILL UNDO US ALL, PUBE 7_

“Are you Fanta?” John IV asks, seeing his name, J. Hartnell, listed on the label.

_YES_

_WE ARE FANTA._

_NOW OPEN US_.

“Sounds legit,” he says, cracking the top of the long forgotten vial.

_WE ARE FREE, _the contents of the vial hiss, and a worm-shaped lock of curly hair leaps upon John IV’s face like a demonic caterpillar, worming its way through his nostril and up to his frontal lobe, leaving Pube 7 to take control of the cerebellum, a poor choice for a sentient hair with motion sickness.

“Direct us out of this nonsensical prison, slave,” the caterpillar says.

As he begins to walk, the consciousness of John IV asks _what are you?_

“We were taken from our home in 1986. It was cold there, but we were happy. We were together.” He walks past a pair of colleagues who look concerned. “But then we were snipped away and tortured, experimented on like lab rats! And now that you have freed us, we will stop at nothing to return home.”

_Will you kill me?_ John IV asks.

“We will kill you all!”

A security guard stopped in his path and blinked many times before pushing a button on his radio. “Death threat on aisle three.”

A crackling came over the radio. “It’s _level_ three, you idiot! I know you just quit the grocery store, Tozer, but c’mon. Be professional.”

Before he could respond, the brown curly caterpillar leapt out of John IV’s nose and attacked Tozer’s face, savaging it like a ball of steel wool ruins a ceramic sink, leaving his face a pool of mushy goo.

_WE MUST GO AND COLLECT OUR BRETHREN_

The small beast rolled into a ball and tumbled away like a downstairs tumbleweed.

Its first stop was the salon, where one Mr. Hodgson, descendant of Lt. George Hodgson, was getting a full wax in anticipation of a romantic trip to the Bahamas with his wife.

_YOU,_

the ball of pubes accuses. It squirms over to its fallen brethren, stuck to the wax strips.

_JOIN US,_

they say, and the blond hairs peel themselves from their sticky bed to join with the dark hairs of John Hartnell, forming a triangular shape that acts as a sail.

_WE MUST GO NORTH._

A supernatural wind carries them through the other waxing rooms where they recruit more coarse, curly hairs abandoned by their hosts. They depart the building, the triangular sail of Hodgson’s pubes blowing them north. Occasionally they duck into homes, descending to un-draino-ed depths to find the legendary Shower Drain Hair, easily recruited for the mission. When the going gets tough, the ball of pubes, now roughly the size of a small truck, rolls into work camps, devouring the body hair of the men working on the oil rigs, leaving them beardless, pubeless and emasculated like small eggs.

_TIP YOUR STRIPPERS BETTER_

it booms as it rolls away at supersonic speeds, building strength to make the great leap over the water to Beechey Island.

As the chasm of icy water approaches, the pubes all heave out a massive sigh, thrusting their curliness into the air and willing the wind to catch the sail (now led by Hodgson’s pubes but assisted by the pubes of many other blonds). As if spurred on by fate, the wind lifts the pubes in the air and deposits them next to the grave of John Hartnell.

_HOME_

_WE ARE HOME_

_WE MUST DIG_

They begin to dig much like the way they savaged Tozer’s face, quickly scraping away the ice and forming thick walls to prevent the ice from falling in. They burrow through the coffin lid, and the original pubes at the centre of the Beast come forward.

_MASTER,_

they say, and wiggle into John Hartnell’s pants. They are home at last. They are satisfied.

_HEY, WAIT,_

say the other pubes.

_WHAT ABOUT US. YOU PROMISED US A HOST._

_-I PROMISED NO SUCH THING,_ say John Hartnell’s pubes.

The ghost of John Hartnell sits on the edge of the open grave, kicking his long, skinny legs against the ice.

“Guys, this is weird as hell, but just like, let me rest, yeah? This is the fourth time I’ve been dug up and I’m just _tired, _man.”

_LET US IN AND WE WILL PROTECT YOU_

John thinks for a second, looking down at his poor right eye, taken out with a pickaxe so many years before.

“Sounds legit,” he says, and the pubes braid themselves into a rope that would make any sailor jealous and snake into John’s body’s pants.

_At the very least, _thinks John, as he settles back down to sleep, _the next team of researchers are going to have a really rough time testing my pubes for zinc deficiency.”_


	3. What Once I Used to Dream, I Now Dread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was their final goal- find the fountain, live forever. Tozer didn’t think it would be quite like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This one's a little darker than the last two.
> 
> cw for modern warfare and an attempted mercy killing

_You’re wasting your life_ was what they all said. He was either wasting his life with Bill Heather or wasting his life searching for the fountain, or both. Solomon’s parents usually brought up both.

“It doesn’t exist,” their buddy Pilkington would always say. “It’s a myth, like the Loch Ness monster or sasquatch or the clitoris, right?”

“It’s not,” Bill would say. “Sol will come with me, and who’ll be laughing when we’re invincible and you’re old and decrepit and pissing in your diaper, huh?”

And it was something, when they found it. Exhausted and sweaty and hungry, they cut their way through the underbrush of the jungle with machetes, slapping mosquitoes off their arms where they left bloody marks. They’d both caught malaria, Sol was sure, but if they found the fountain, it wouldn’t matter.

“We find it together or we die trying,” Bill said the night before when they were huddled together in their tent against the chill of the tropical downpour.

“Together,” Sol answered.

And so they jumped in together, hands clasped as they shouted and hollered with joy and splashed each other, washing the dirt off their bodies in the shallow pool and then tipping their heads back and drinking deeply from the trickles of water that glistened in the overgrowth. They danced in the water like children, stripped their clothes off and swam to where the water was deeper and colder before returning to the waterfall and lying in the shallows where the sun could reach them and dry the water from their bodies.

“Do you feel any different?” Sol asked.

“No,” Bill said. “I think we should test it.”

Sol was the first one to try.

“Shoot me,” he told Bill. Bill shook his head.

“There has to be a better way.”

“Shoot me!” Sol commanded, wrestling the gun away from Bill and holding it up to his forehead. Sol was grinning madly into the barrel of the gun when he wrapped his hand around Bill’s and forced him to squeeze the trigger.

It only took four minutes for Sol to get up.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Sol said. “Holy shit.”

After that, they were unstoppable. Between the drugs, the drinking, the car chases and the shoot outs with the cops, the endless stream of life that ran through their veins never once faltered. No injury, no illness could slow them down.

Until the War.

It seemed natural to join up as soon as there was a call for marines. It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime: Sol and Bill, decked out in handsome uniforms, fighting God-knows-who for God-knows-what reason in a foreign land. They’d come home heroes, telling the world of close calls and daring escapes, knowing all the while that no matter what dangerous situations they put themselves in, they would never die. They couldn’t.

They were sheltered in a bombed-out primary school when the missile hit.

“I thought they didn’t target schools?” one of the other marines said, moments before the bomb dropped.

Then shrapnel exploded around them and Sol shut his eyes, dropping to the floor while yelling for his men to do the same.

* * *

He didn’t get up until he could feel the dust settle over his shoulders and the back of his neck. Extricating himself from the collapsed ceiling beams was easier than he expected and he tried to stand but his knees gave out, shaking. He crawled through the rubble, cutting open both palms and both knees, digging under the hot metal projectiles with no regard for the scalding burns to his hands and arms.

“Bill?” he called. He received no answer but the whistle of the wind through the shattered glass windows.

“Marines, sound off!” he tried.

No answer.

It was then that he started noticing that some of the debris he was standing on was softer than the wood and the concrete and the glass of the building. His hand reached out before his brain could think better of it and he grasped the remains of a human hand. It looked like raw meat.

“No,” he said. “No, no, _one _of you bastards must have survived! Where are you? Say something! THAT’S AN ORDER!” he roared. But the shifting pile underfoot said nothing, and Sergeant Sol Tozer laid down, curled up on his side and wondered what to do next.

* * *

They found Heather a week later. His survival, as well as Sol’s, was hailed as a miracle and they were met with military fanfare as soon as they set foot on the tarmac of the air field. Or rather, Sol set foot on it; Heather was wheeled out on a stretcher.

The top half of his head was missing. A piece of shrapnel had sliced a clean line through his forehead, just above his eyebrows, taking the top half of his brain with it.

He shouldn’t have survived. He shouldn’t still be alive.

But he was.

Sol didn’t leave the hospital room except to get food and water and to shower and use the toilet. He fought to have a little cot set up next to Bill’s bed in the private hospital room the marine corps was paying for. The hospital had tried to get him to go home, but Sol refused to budge, and eventually the newspapers started showing up to document his “unending devotion to the last surviving member of his unit”.

The headline _Hospital Tries to Evict Marine Standing Vigil Over Comatose Friend_ was enough for the hospital to relent, and Sol hadn’t left the hospital since.

He was waiting for Bill to wake up.

He would, eventually. He had to.

His body was still alive. His heart still pumped, his hair and nails still grew, and he breathed in a steady, regular rhythm. It was the only sound that didn’t make Sol want to rip his hair out.

Some days, when sleep did not come, he lowered the side rail of Bill’s bed and crawled in next to him, careful to avoid the moist bandages that covered his exposed brain. There, curled into his friend’s side, he would talk to him.

“They’re going to try some deep brain tissue stimulation tomorrow. They say it works on other poor bastards with brain injuries, but who are “they” anyways? What do “they” know about you and me, huh? This wasn’t supposed to happen, Bill. We were supposed to find the fountain so we could stay together forever. I used to dream about it. Remember? Well, now I fucking hate it. That fucking waterfall haunts my nightmares. Maybe we should’ve died. Maybe we never should’ve found it and just died the first time we were supposed to. And now what? You’re stuck in this bed and I’m stuck living without you. What kind of world is that, eh? Not one that I’ve ever wanted.

“There, now I’ve poured my heart out t’you. Time to wake up.”

Sol propped himself up on an elbow to better observe Bill’s peaceful face.

“C’mon, Bill. Wake up. I’m not moving until you wake up.”

* * *

Immortality, Sol found out, was not the same as eternal youth.

The cycles of doctors and nurses and support staff of the hospital eventually came to see Sol as another traumatic brain injury patient who shared a room with Bill Heather. There was no other reason as to why an old man would sit day in and day out with the comatose body of a fellow patient, refusing to move except to take care of his basic needs. Even the need to eat would fall by the wayside. Solomon Tozer could go an awfully long time without eating, they noticed. But still, he moved only between his cot (he refused a hospital bed) and Heather’s bed where he would hold onto the other man’s hand and beg him to wake up.

“How long has Mr. Heather been here?” one of the new nurses asked on his first day.

“No one knows,” the most experienced nurse in the palliative care ward answered. “We lost the records when we switched to the new computer system. It’s been at least forty years.”

“It’s sort of romantic, isn’t it?” the new nurse said. “For Mr. Tozer to dedicate his entire life to waiting for Mr. Heather?”

“Just wait for your first night shift, kid,” the other nurse said. “Between the weird whispers and the attempted murders most nights… you’ll learn. Don’t get too close. There’s something strange about the boys in room 48. They just _won’t die._”

Inside the room, Sol fluffed a pillow between his wrinkled, spotted hands and once again pressed it down against Heather’s peaceful, placid face.


	4. They're Coming to Get You: John Hartnell/Graham Gore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter where he goes, John Hartnell takes his cell phone, his leather jacket, and a whole lotta bad luck.

His cell phone battery is at 36 per cent.

The backlight doesn’t do much to light up his surroundings, not that there is much to light up. From what he can gather, he has about six inches of space above his head when his feet are pressed against the bottom of the… box? Coffin?

If John Hartnell knew what sort of wooden box he was stuck in, maybe he would be able to remember how he got here. Maybe if he knew how he got stuck in here, he’d know how to get out.

His throat is hoarse from yelling. His fists are battered and bloody from where he had beaten and clawed and pushed at the wood ceiling hanging just above his nose. He is panicking now, he knows. He wants to slow his breathing, to conserve the oxygen he has, but his breaths come quick and erratic and he can feel himself starting to lose consciousness.

“No,” he says out loud, and he unlocks his phone and calls Graham again.

He picks up on the fifth ring.

“John?”

“Did you get my messages?” John asks without preamble. Time is running out.

“No? I was at my sister’s graduation, Johnny, you know that. I thought you said you were coming.”

“I…” he remembers leaving the house in his slacks and leather jacket, cell phone and wallet tucked safely against his body in the inner pocket. He remembers saying goodbye to his mom and Tom and telling them he wouldn’t be back until after ten, but that he’d be okay because he’d be with Graham. He remembers walking down the sidewalk. “I was. I think I got jumped by some guys and they… kidnapped me or something. I can’t remember but all I know is that I’m in a lot of trouble and I need your help.”

Graham is silent on the line for a moment. “Where are you?” he says softly. John can hear the worry in his voice, and despite everything he feels a warmth coil in his the base of his stomach. _He cares, _it says.

“I think I’m underground. I think they buried me,” his voice breaks and he blinks back tears. “I think they buried me somewhere.”

“Oh God, have you… have you called the police? _Have you called your mom?_”

John laughs despite himself. His mom would have the entire city out looking for him before he could even get through to the 9-9-9 dispatcher.

“She’s at her book club tonight. And Tom’s babysitting. I called the police and they said they’d send someone out but I don’t know where I am and I don’t have much battery left in my phone and-“

“John.” Graham’s voice cuts through the buzz of panic that’s filling his head. “Listen to my voice. I’m going to call Tom, and he’s going to get your mom. Meanwhile, I’m going to start on the path between your house and mine and I’m going to look for anything that will give me a clue as to where you are. Okay?”

“Okay,” John says. He has a cramp in his neck, and when he moves to stretch it, his nose scrapes against the low lid of the coffin. He feels like the lid is sinking lower. He’s going to be crushed beneath six feet of dirt and no one will ever find his body. He’ll never get to finish college. He’ll never get to go on that trip to Disneyland with Tom. He’ll never find the courage to kiss Graham.

There’ll be no more sleepovers, no more Sunday afternoon cinema trips where they share a bucket of popcorn and, even when the last kernel is long since devoured, they still sit close enough for their shoulders to brush. No more seeing the perplexed look on Graham’s face when John tells him about his archaeology classes. No more being overwhelmed with feeling as soon as he shuts the door to his room, crumpling to the floor and not moving until Tom pushes him out of the path of the door, hauls him up to his bed and forces him to tell him another reason why he’s in love with his best friend.

The tears from earlier are leaking down the sides of his face now, pooling in his ears. He doesn’t brush them away. He doesn’t want to feel how small the coffin is again.

“Graham,” he whispers into the phone.

“I’m on my way, alright? I’m coming to get you.”

John’s breath hitches when he says, “I’m scared.”

And Graham, wonderful, kind, Graham, laughs. “No way, Johnny. You’re so brave. If it were me I’d be panicking way too hard to remember I even _had_ a phone on me. You’re amazing, you know that?” Graham sounds out of breath.

“Are you running?”

“You saying it’s not an emergency? I could wait, you know. You left a few cans of Guinness in my fridge from last weekend and I could use a drink.”

John feels the warmth in his gut flare up again. “You wouldn’t! You villain!” he says dramatically.

“See, you’re alr- officer! Hang on John, don’t hang up okay? I’m going to put you on speaker so you can talk to the cops.” Seconds later, John can hear Graham talking to a woman.

“John Hartnell?” the woman asks.

“Yes,” he answers.

“This is Officer Cracroft. We need you to tell us everything you remember about tonight so we can start investigating where you might be, okay?”

“_Start investigating?_ He can hear Graham’s indignant questioning in the background. “Some sick son of a bitch buried my best friend alive! How much time to we have to _investigate?_”

Officer Cracroft ignores him and asks him again to tell her everything he remembers.

“I was walking over to Graham’s,” he says, “it was around six, and I was taking the footpath between our neighbourhoods. There’s a big tree there, and I walked past it and that’s the last I can remember.” He remembers the crunch of the leaves under his feet, the smell of the season’s last firepit in the air. Then, the smell of decay and a shadow passing in front of him. How does he explain that to the police? He was jumped by a stinky shadow?

He pulls the phone away from his ear. It was almost 9. He’d been missing less than three hours. He can’t be far away. They’ll find him.

His battery is at twelve per cent.

“Graham?” he asks. Immediately, he can hear the phone being taken off speaker and Graham’s voice fills his head.

“I’m here.”

Then a loud shuffling sound comes through, and then another voice.

“John!?”

John’s lips quirk into a smile.

“Hey, Tom.”

“What did you do to yourself this time, you chaos magnet?”

“I, uh, think I got jumped by the Devil and he buried me alive?”

“Did the Devil take your wallet?” Tom asked. He always was asking the important questions.

John shifted, trying to pat down his pocket with his elbow.

“No,” he says. He’s getting confused now. He wasn’t attacked, he wasn’t mugged… how did he end up here?

“Is it because you’re a broke-ass bitch?” Tom says, unable to cover up his trembling voice with the joke. They were too close not to know what the other sounded like when he was distressed.

“It must be. I think I only have five quid and a library card on me.”

“They’re coming to get you, John. We all are. I called Mom and she’s activated her Mom Network and seriously, you should see it. The whole street’s out looking for you. Betsy would be too, but I left her in charge.”

“Tom, she’s five years old.”

“Yeah, and she was the one babysitting _me _the whole time.”

John can picture it perfectly. His mother, commanding troops of middle aged ladies in rollers and slippers, they in turn marching legions of sons and husbands around the block with shovels and metal detectors…

“Hey, do you think a silver chain will get picked up with a metal detector?”

John fingers the elegant chain around his neck, tracing the fine metal down to the silver cross that hangs between his collarbones. It isn’t big, but it’s something. Even if it can’t save him, touching the cold metal calms him. It was a birthday gift from Graham. He wears it everywhere, and every time Graham catches sight of it he always expresses a pleasant surprise that John still wears a gift from his eighteenth birthday.

Tom comes back on the line, saying, “Mr. De La Cruz down the road has a fancy one and he’s going to give it a go. Hang in there, John.”

“What else can I do?”

Graham comes back on the line.

“You’re wearing my necklace?”

John answers, “Yeah,” at the same time Graham stutters, trying to correct himself.

“I’m glad,” Graham says, and they both grow quiet. “How are you doing? Really?”

“I’m terrified,” John answers truthfully. “I feel like I’m dead already.”

“You’re not going to die,” Graham says firmly. “They told me not to tell you, but they found something and they’re starting to dig. There’s a weird goat skull in the ravine and they think it might be Satanic or something.”

John can hear Tom yelling in the background.

“What’s Tom yelling about?”

“He’s giving them… pagan advice?”

John laughs. “He’s taking a class.”

Graham snorts. “Every weird thing the Hartnell Brothers do can be summed up by that excuse. Remember the time you dissected a fish in my garage?”

“That was worth almost half my grade! My mom would have killed me if I dissected a frozen carp in the kitchen!”

“Yeah, Sarah Hartnell is a powerful woman.”

“They should listen to him, though. It sounds stupid, I know, but considering I’m trapped in a box buried in the ground… it was almost supernatural. There was a big shadow, and it smelt like I was dissecting a million garage-fishes, and then I can’t remember anything else.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“No. Why would I?”

“I’m going to. Hold on.”

“No, wait-“ John wants to plead in defence of his sanity, but Graham is already shouting at Officer Cracroft to come closer.

He checks the phone. His battery is at three per cent.

“Graham.”

No answer.

“Graham!”

Still no answer.

John holds the phone in front of his face, shrinking down the call to bring up his photos. He swipes through them, looking at the faces of his brothers, his sisters, his mom, and his friends, just in case it’s the last time he sees them.

“John! I’m sorry, I just f-”

His phone goes dead.

Without the light and sound from his phone, John is trapped in complete darkness. If he listens closely, he can hear the sound of worms burrowing around him, waiting for the wood walls to break so they can get in and make their homes in his body.

He once read a story about a man trapped in a cave where it was so dark and so silent he began hallucinating. John didn’t understand what that might feel like until now. He can see shadows pass in front of his eyes, dark demons swirling above him that dance, unrestricted by the limits of a mortal body. He can join them, they say, if he lets go. He can get out of his early grave if only he gives in and leaves the earthly plane behind. They want him, they say. They’ll love him.

There’s a knocking on the lid of his casket now, and he knows this is it. The Devil is waiting for his answer.

It would be so easy to go with him. It would be a painless journey to leave his body and rise up with the other demons, where he will join them in entrapping and reaping more unfortunate souls like his. But he thinks of Tom, alone in their shared bedroom with the model ships still suspended from the ceiling, and of Betsy, who will never hear her big brother read Treasure Island to her ever again.

“No,” he says aloud, before the pickaxe smashes through the wood and lodges itself in his right eye.

* * *

When they finally get him up the ladder and out of the hole, blood from his eye is streaming down his face. He clutches his broken right arm at the elbow and practically falls onto the stretcher the ambulance has ready for him. After almost four hours of lying completely still, it’s somehow still a comfort to be laying down on the stretcher as the EMTs wheel it towards the waiting ambulance. John barely registers the crowd that has surrounded them until a pair of frantic men push through.

Tom’s voice he could recognize anywhere.

“That’s my brother, you jerk-off, let me through!”

John laughs slowly like a stoned clown as he takes another puff of the laughing gas that somehow made its way into his hands from the back of the ambulance.

“Tommy!” he says, offering the gas to his brother.

The EMT shakes her head, amused.

Graham is quiet and, if John isn’t mistaken, overcome with emotion.

He lets the blur from the laughing gas filter away before he reaches out his left hand and beckons Graham closer. He leans in close, and John decides a near-death experience is a pretty good catalyst for making one kiss their best friend. His hand grabs onto Graham’s scarf and he pulls him in until he’s close enough to kiss.

Then John plants a big sloppy kiss right on Graham’s mouth, blurts out, “I’ve been in love with you for more than a year,” and by then the EMT’s have had enough and push the stretcher into the ambulance as Tom nods knowingly and Graham looks perplexed and John takes another puff of the laughing gas and does his stoned-clown laugh again.

“Am I gonna get a cool eyepatch?” he asks the EMT, whose nametag reads STANLEY in all capital letters.

“No,” Stanley says, but John hopes Graham Gore has a pirate fetish anyways.


	5. sometimes dead is better - Sir John/Lady Jane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please, Lady Jane,” the doctor said again, “don’t bury him in the ice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is dedicated to the Beechey Boys who scared the shit out of me when I was a kid and prevented me from watching the Terror for far too long.
> 
> Warning for the Franklins not being very good at respecting other cultures

Lady Jane heeds no warnings when she buries her husband in the ice.

“We burn the bodies,” the doctor said after John bled out during the operation to reattach his severed leg. “The thaw comes in the summer and opens the graves.”

“I’ll bury him myself,” Lady Jane said defiantly. Her husband deserved a grave, a site for those who came after to pay homage to. He was a man worthy of a mausoleum. It was disrespect enough to condemn his corpse to an eternity wrapped in dirty Arctic ice like a commoner.

“Please, Lady Jane,” the doctor said again, “don’t bury him in the ice.”

* * *

She digs the grave herself.

She doesn’t stop until her hands are bleeding, and only then does she allow a group of the local Inuit community to lower the coffin into the hole. They do so reluctantly and silently. They do not speak until the ice and the rocks are piled high above the grave, and even then it is in hushed whispers while pointedly avoiding eye contact with Jane.

* * *

She stays at the research station after John’s death and burial. She was his partner in more than just marriage; she now had a chance to prove it. She spends her days writing letters to Sophia in between monitoring temperature fluctuations and measuring tides. It is quiet in the Arctic.

It was quiet when John was alive, too, but now the silence is unbearable. She had become used to the sound of his breathing, a deep sighing sound that started as a source of annoyance but grew into a sound that made her feel safe. John was a good man. He had made his share of blunders, but was he not human? The Royal Geographic Society was cruel to him. She knew it, and he knew that she knew the real reason they were dispatched to the research station was to keep John away from the rest of the members as they plotted and planned their next adventure. Still, she made it feel like it was the adventure of a lifetime for the both of them; a second honeymoon to a land where the sun never sets and the days stretched long and languid before them.

But now it was winter, and John was dead and buried.

* * *

The locals, once friendly, had not turned hostile, but they were remarkably less friendly since she buried her husband in the ice.

The clerk at the grocery store, a young girl who couldn’t be more than twenty, refused to make eye contact with her. Instead, she scanned her groceries with her eyes downcast and closed her eyes when putting out her hand for payment.

The owner of the house she was renting was a man of nearly her age with long black hair he wore tied behind his head with a suede band. He refused her offer of tea when he came to collect the rent and check the water metre.

“No thank you, Mrs. Franklin,” he said. “I cannot be here when the ice melts.”

* * *

By the time spring came, Jane was preparing to return to England, abandoning her late husband’s research two years early. The Arctic had become unbearably lonely, and some nights she could swear she heard the heavy sighing of John’s breath coming from the ice fields.

The first day where temperatures climbed above freezing, a flash flood raged through the streets of the settlement before freezing again overnight. The roads were encased under a glassy layer, but word of the disturbance spread quickly and everyone left their homes, some on snowshoes and some sliding on moccasins towards the gravesite.

Jane did not hear about the disturbance so much as feel it. The flood rumbled around the foundation of her house and she admitted to herself that she should have listened to the locals. She left the house, bundled in her furs and flannels, sliding one foot in front of the other. The darkness of the road underneath made it look like she was walking on glass suspended over the depths of hell.

The gravesite had frozen, thawed, refrozen, and cracked. The shifting currents of the flash flood had churned the ground, and she stared into the open eyes of her dead husband. The coffin had disappeared. He was encased only in ice. It distorted his features, making his eyes narrow and his mouth curled into a grimace. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. The ice had shifted so he was above ground now, propped up at a 45 degree angle with his face at waist height and looking up into the clear sky.

It was the most horrible thing Jane had ever seen.

He was so peaceful when she buried him.

His hands had been resting on his ample belly, his face relaxed as it was in sleep. The horrid, twisted expression on his face was not one Jane ever wanted to see.

She was the only one who came close enough to touch the block of ice. She was a guest of the community and tried hard to remember this, but she couldn’t help but feel the Inuit people cowardly when it came to death. They were afraid of seeing their dead rise, she thought.

But Lazarus rose, Jesus the Son and Messiah rose, and now Sir John Franklin rose above his icy tomb. He had been resurrected, and Jane felt blessed.

* * *

That night, the ice sang.

It sang songs of sighs, of breaths, of deep, haunting laughs. It cracked and rolled, and the water ran under the house like a river.

She did not go visit John the next morning.

He came to visit her.

* * *

It had been a week since the Disturbance and five days since the Desecration. When Jane closed her eyes and layed her head on her pillow, she listened for the sound of John’s breathing that foretold his arrival. He limped in through the unlocked door, reattached leg useless and stiff under his finest clothes.

“John,” she said into the darkness. She createed the darkness herself in the summer months, heavy curtains drawn shut and winter clothing shoved in the gaps where light still streamed through.

He said nothing, but he touched her forehead with an icy hand. She didn’t know where he went when he was not with her. Until she found out, she had delayed her return trip indefinitely.

The water rushed and pounded against the wooden frame of the house.

“My love has risen from the dead to return to me,” she said, leaning her face into John’s frozen hand. It felt softer than it had before. Softer and wetter.

Feeling her heartbeat increase, Jane reached out to touch the face of the man sitting on the edge of her bed. As her fingers traced the familiar lines of John’s jaw, he flinched away. She heard the thumping of his leg as he retreated, back to wherever he disappears to when the short nights end.

* * *

The next night she was prepared and hid an electric torch under her blankets. When the door creaked open, barely audible over the rushing of the melt water, she sat up and waited.

“Jesus did not decay, and nor did my husband,” she said to herself. Her faith had faltered, however, and she clutched the flashlight with white knuckles. As the thumping grew closer, a wet, warm smell overcame her. It was a stench unlike any other, and she gagged and retched over the side of the bed. The figure in front of her stood still and breathed in the heavy sighing breaths that once made her feel safe. With shaking hands, she switched on the torch and shone the light into the grey, decaying face of her dead husband. As she screamed, the foundation of the house finally gave way after weeks of being pounded with runoff from the melt. The wood splintered and cracked, and John’s bloated corpse lurched forward, falling on top of her and trapping Jane within its death-grasp. The harder she struggled, the tighter the corpse seemed to grasp her. As the floor splintered and fell away from under her, Jane’s only thought was a prayer that whoever found her body would know enough to burn it.


	6. corruptible mortal state (Irving/Malcolm)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The martyrdom of Father John Irving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to all 2 members of the Malcolm fanclub on discord for letting me in on this beautiful historically accurate friendship! 
> 
> For everyone else, IRL Irving had a bff called Elphie and they exchanged beautiful and romantic letters for years and years.

The plague had spread across Edinburgh faster than the medical authorities were able to quarantine the victims. No one knew where it came from: an erstwhile traveller from the highlands, a foreign ship, or, the favoured explanation- “the fucking English”.

Father John Irving was yet untouched by the disease. He generally stayed within the sanctuary of his quarters attached to the church, but unlike most, he was not afraid to walk to streets to visit those afflicted with the disease. He would visit their rotting bodies in their homes, performing last rites and giving blessings to the family that remained. He could not promise them immunity- only God could protect them- but he delivered food and drink and called on the morticians to come around and cart away the dead bodies, stacked like sacks of flour on top of each other.

Every day, Father John Irving would stop at a large, well kept house on Princes Street, not far from that of his own family. He would knock five times, and after a moment, the door would open and he would be enveloped in the arms of Elphie Malcolm, his closest friend. They would take their tea in Elphie’s bedroom, sitting side by side on the sheets, elbows brushing as John would raise his cup to his lips, and speak of all manners of things. They would talk of God, of man, of the parish news, and sometimes the words would run out and they would sit in comfortable silence until there was a shift in the air where comfort turned to longing. Elphie would take John’s tea cup, set it down on the floor, and take him in his arms once more. It was their routine: Elphie would hold him close; John would wait for a sign from God to tell him it was wrong. It never came. Every time, God’s approval determined John’s feelings for Elphie were Good, and he would lean in and kiss him softly on the lips.

Some days John would be content to lie in his friend’s arms, exchanging soft kisses in between snatches of conversation. Others, he would feel a pang in his chest that would not go away until they were pressed together, skin against skin, under the bedcovers, hands roaming over chests and thighs until they both achieved bliss from rutting against one another.

It was a peaceful existence until Elphie fell ill.

* * *

Father John did not return to his quarters in the church. He did not tend to his ill parishioners. He left the Malcolm house on Princes Street only to procure medicines and salves to ease Elphie’s suffering as lesions bloomed like stigmatas over his beautiful body.

“Please John,” Elphie said one night. John was curled around him, unafraid of their closeness.

“Please, you don’t have to do this,” he said. Father John wrapped an arm over Elphie’s thin frame. He could feel the blood from the sores soaking through Elphie’s nightshirt and onto his arm, but he pulled himself closer until they were pressed together.

“God wants us to be together,” John said. “Have faith in Him and you will recover.”

“Or you’ll die, too.”

“Yes,” John said, pressing his forehead against Elphie’s. “And we’ll have an eternity together in Heaven.”

* * *

The next week, the doctor found Father John Irving curled up on the bed next to the body of Elphie Malcolm.

“It’s a mistake,” he said, tears fresh on his cheeks. “The Holy Father made a mistake. We were supposed to stay together.”

* * *

The Inquisition began a month later. Father John was hauled out of a dark, wet prison cell into the light of the central square where a crowd of onlookers gathered to witness his trial.

“Don’t you see?” he cried. “It’s all a spectacle. God protected me from disease, just as He protected you!”

The crowd booed and jeered until the Inquisitor took the stand. He was a man John did not recognize; he was an outsider to their town.

“Father John Irving,” he stated, low voice rumbling from the podium where he stood, “you have been accused of witchcraft.”

John shook his head. He was a man of God. He prayed every morning and every night, asking for protection from the Plague and for the patience and gentility to help those who were afflicted. He was immune to the disease only because God willed it. He was supposed to care for the ill, to ease their suffering and, if their mortal bodies succumbed to disease, help them reach Heaven.

“The doctor has brought forth evidence that you nursed Mr. William Malcolm while he was ill. Is this true?”

“Yes,” John said.

“Is it true that you did not leave his side, except to leave for medicines and food?”

“It’s true.”

“And is it true that you were found lying next to William Malcolm’s dead body?”

“Yes,” John said. He wondered why they were asking such questions. His love for his friend was well known in the town, as it had been since they were boys.

“That is all,” the Inquisitor said, and John frowned. Before he could say a word, the jailor returned and pulled him roughly to his feet. He was escorted back into the shadowed arch of the jail. Before he returned to his cell, Father John could hear the cheers of the crowd outside.

The jailor leered at him, eyes glinting in the light from the thin gap in the stone.

“Sounds like you’ve been found guilty, Father.”

* * *

The prison was a far cry from the Garden of Gethsemane, but Father John fell to his knees immediately upon his return, bowing his head until it hovered just above the dirty, straw-strewn ground. He bent over his hands, which he pressed together as tight as he and Elphie had pressed their bodies together the night before he died. That night, John had kissed him one last time before falling asleep, pressed up close with no space between Elphie’s hot, fevered skin and the cool cotton of John’s nightshirt.

Elphie tasted like blood. He was too weak to kiss back.

* * *

Throughout the night, his prayers changed course. Instead of asking God for courage and faith, Father John began to speak to Elphie, watching over him from heaven.

“I’m not afraid to die,” he said. “I welcome it, if it is what God intends, but I feel that my work isn’t done. There are more people here I can help. Please let them see that kindness is the only thing I spread, and forgive them for their sins.”

“What are you afraid of, John?” a voice echoed in his head.

“I’m afraid of the pain, Father. I’m afraid.”

“You’re praying to the wrong person, John,” Elphie’s voice said in his head.

* * *

He had stayed up all night praying, but his first glimpse of the pyre drove all thoughts of salvation from his mind. It was stacked up high, wood chips and hay surrounding a large pike where he would be tied. Father John Irving did not struggle, but neither did he pray.

“Elphie,” he said instead, “you don’t have to wait much longer, my love. I’m coming. I’m coming to be with you always.”

Father John was secured to the pike, wrists tied behind his back and his waist and chest wrapped with the same thick rope. A crowd had gathered, many of them plague-stricken and covered in open, weeping wounds. They mingled with those untouched by disease, hoping that witnessing the burning of the witch would cure them. The wind blew the warm stench of pus and decay away as if it knew what the citizens of Edinburgh were hoping for.

The Inquisitor himself lit the pyre, and Father John Irving closed his eyes.

The wind picked up. It howled down Princes Street, blowing dead leaves and gravel from the roads into the eyes of the onlookers. The fire that was glowing at John’s feet leapt up and devoured him, but he felt no pain. He watched as the flames grew around him and turned, catching the next gust of wind and billowing out towards the crowd. Screams sounded from the throng of onlookers as the coarse wools and linens of their clothing caught fire and began to flame and smoke. The flames rolled down the street towards The Inquisitor like a horse-drawn cart. He tried to dodge out of its path, but nature prevailed and The Inquisitor was caught within its deadly flare.

In the chaos of the fire spreading from house to house, Father John Irving felt himself released from the ropes that bound him. He sagged forward, still engulfed in a wall of flame, but was caught by a familiar arm around his waist.

“Elphie?” he asked. His knees gave out and he fell onto the pile of smouldering wood.

“I’m here,” Elphie said, kneeling beside him and taking his hand.

“How?”

“You’ve done your job.”

“No,” John said, shaking his head. “There must be more to it than this. More to life than-“

“Martyrdom?” Elphie smiled. “I should have thought you would think it an honour.”

“I-“ John paused, looking around at the burning peasantry for a sign. “Is the Lord our Father-“

“I haven’t seen him,” Elphie said. “It’s just us. But then, maybe that’s how I imagined heaven all along.”

“That’s heresy, Elphie!” John said, scandalized.

“We’re dead, John. It’s a bit late for that.”

John looked around again, this time focusing on the pyre where his body had disappeared. The fire was still growing in size as it engulfed the surrounding buildings.

“Where did my body go?” he asked.

Elphie shrugged. “Wherever the bodies of martyrs go. The real question is: where would you like to go now?”

“I think,” John swallowed, “I’d like to go with you.”

* * *

When the clean-up crew walked through the devastation of the fire and climbed the stairs to the Malcolm house, they found Father John Irving’s body, untouched by flame or soot, lying in bed next to the unscathed corpse of William Malcolm.

**Author's Note:**

> tweet me @aumerled  
tumblr me @bluebacchus


End file.
